4 ms·

As long as it's all FOSS, this sounds like an excellent idea. I'd gladly pay for Mozilla to stop being beholden to Google.

nexuist 7y ago
Is it still FOSS if it's paid?
- otabdeveloper3 7y ago
  Yes. "Free as in freedom".
  - sjwright 7y ago
    To be as charitable as possible to the grandparent, it may depend on whether there are any closed-source elements to the cloud services. We don't know for certain because it has yet to be announced. (Of course there's no realistic chance of that happening given Mozilla's foundational principles and solid track record thereof.)
    - bscphil 7y ago
      Aren't all the server side components of Pocket closed source?
- Millennium 7y ago
  As long as all of the source is available under FOSS licenses, yes. Free as in speech, not free as in beer, remember? Question is, will Mozilla actually stick to that? What the paid features also be open-source, at least to whatever extent the concept of source code applies?
  - jasonhansel 7y ago
    Ideally, Mozilla would let us pay to use their servers, while also providing an OSS self-hosted version with equivalent functionality. (Firefox is available under the MPL, which is a sort of compromise between copyleft and MIT-style licenses. So it'd be difficult to make any new FF feature entirely closed source.)
    - Crinus 7y ago
      MPL does allow closed source extensions, Netscape wanting to create a proprietary browser on top of Mozilla was the main reason MPL was created and they didn't use something like GPL.
- GuB-42 7y ago
  Yes and no. Yes because there is nothing preventing you from selling free (libre) software. Commercial use of free software is actually encouraged and part of its success. No because while you can make people pay for free software, you can't prevent redistribution. In practice, it means you can't force people to actually pay. That's why selling free software usually means selling a service. Usually some form of support or online account. Note that proprietary software based on free software is not free software. For example Chrome not free even though Chromium is. And if Mozilla releases paid version of Firefox with even a tiny bit of proprietary code, it stops being FOSS.
  - Xylakant 7y ago
    You can make them pay for the binary, while keeping access to the source open (Redhat/CentOS).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

nexuist 7y ago

Is it still FOSS if it's paid?

otabdeveloper3 7y ago
Yes. "Free as in freedom".
- sjwright 7y ago
  To be as charitable as possible to the grandparent, it may depend on whether there are any closed-source elements to the cloud services. We don't know for certain because it has yet to be announced. (Of course there's no realistic chance of that happening given Mozilla's foundational principles and solid track record thereof.)
  - bscphil 7y ago
    Aren't all the server side components of Pocket closed source?
Millennium 7y ago
As long as all of the source is available under FOSS licenses, yes. Free as in speech, not free as in beer, remember? Question is, will Mozilla actually stick to that? What the paid features also be open-source, at least to whatever extent the concept of source code applies?
- jasonhansel 7y ago
  Ideally, Mozilla would let us pay to use their servers, while also providing an OSS self-hosted version with equivalent functionality. (Firefox is available under the MPL, which is a sort of compromise between copyleft and MIT-style licenses. So it'd be difficult to make any new FF feature entirely closed source.)
  - Crinus 7y ago
    MPL does allow closed source extensions, Netscape wanting to create a proprietary browser on top of Mozilla was the main reason MPL was created and they didn't use something like GPL.
GuB-42 7y ago
Yes and no. Yes because there is nothing preventing you from selling free (libre) software. Commercial use of free software is actually encouraged and part of its success. No because while you can make people pay for free software, you can't prevent redistribution. In practice, it means you can't force people to actually pay. That's why selling free software usually means selling a service. Usually some form of support or online account. Note that proprietary software based on free software is not free software. For example Chrome not free even though Chromium is. And if Mozilla releases paid version of Firefox with even a tiny bit of proprietary code, it stops being FOSS.
- Xylakant 7y ago
  You can make them pay for the binary, while keeping access to the source open (Redhat/CentOS).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]